“Don’t,” I tell him.
He pauses and sits up, rolling off me. “Shit,” he whispers to himself. “Madison, I didn’t—I wasn’t—” He looks so ashamed of himself all of a sudden; so torn up.
I reach for his arm, but he stands up and steps away. “Crap, I’m sorry, I didn’t—I thought you … Never mind. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say quietly. “Don’t worry.”
He shakes his head stubbornly. “No, it’s not fine, I’m—”
Before he can stop me, I scramble off the bed and shut him up by putting my lips against his. Then I take a half-step back and take his adorable face in my hands. “It’s fine. Just … maybe don’t do it again for a while, okay?”
His eyes, which are wide and sad and can only be described as puppy-dog, search my face for any sign that it’s not fine, but he must not find anything since he nods. “Okay.”
I smile and kiss him again to reassure him, and he kisses me just as hungrily as he was moments before, but this time he’s holding my body as though I’m the most delicate piece of glass, and I try to find a smile.
We spend a while up there, just making out, and I can tell that Bryce is making a conscious effort to be careful where his hands go. I’m so tired that I crash out on his bed at some point or other, and only stir when he shakes me gently awake.
I have no notion of what the time is; I can only assume it’s early morning. I mumble a string of words, trying to find out what time it is … what’s going on. I rub my eyes tiredly.
“Tiff and the girls are leaving in a couple of minutes,” Bryce tells me softly.
“Mm, okay,” I say, the words slurring together. I leave the comfort of his super-soft pillows and stand up, stretching my limbs out.
“You’re really cute when you sleep, you know,” he says with an affectionate smile. “If it’s not completely creepy that I watched you sleep for a while.”
I laugh. “Sorry I fell asleep.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He waves it off with his easy, hundred-watt smile. Then he opens his mouth, closes it, and finally says, “I’m sorry about … about before. You know.” He clears his throat.
“Oh.” I smile and touch his arm. “Don’t worry about it. Forget it happened.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No, no buts,” I insist. “It’s in the past. Seriously. Just forget about it.”
He nods, but doesn’t look happy with himself. He couldn’t look more sincerely torn up about it if he tried, which is why I was so quick to forgive him. I don’t think Bryce would push me or anything, so I put his actions down to the heat of the moment.
I pick up my shoes and we head downstairs, where the girls are waiting. They look tired, coming down from the buzz of whatever they’ve been drinking, but are still gossiping and giggling like always. They grin at me as I drop a shoe, my reactions still too slow to try and catch it.
“Here, I got it.” Bryce leans down and picks it up for me. I smile sleepily and take it from him.
Tiffany’s phone bleeps and she cries, “Ooh! That’s my dad!” She glides over to Bryce and gives him a kiss on the cheek, saying, “This party was awesome, Bryce.”
“Thanks.”
“Totally fantastic,” Summer agrees, giving him a quick hug. Melissa does the same, telling him with a slur that she “had a shit good night.”
The girls start to leave, and I follow them; I only stop when Bryce catches my arm. I look up at him over my shoulder.
“I don’t get a goodbye kiss?” he teases, and I laugh before craning my neck up to kiss him. I only plan on a brief one, but Bryce’s lips have other intentions, and he’s kissing me all over my face before I finally push him away, laughing.
“I had a good night,” I say. “You know, when I was awake.”
He brushes my hair back from my face, his hand lingering there before he bends to kiss my forehead. “Goodnight, Tinker Bell.”
“Goodnight.”
I don’t tell the girls about the almost-topless incident with Bryce—partly because I forget about it until I’m back home. Really, it isn’t that big a deal, since a) nothing actually happened, and b) he apologized and nothing was going to happen after that.
Sunday appears to be uneventful once my mom picks me up from Tiffany’s house.
At least, it remains uneventful until Dwight drops by—a surprise visit, completely out of the blue.
I open the door when I’m in the middle of lunch, and he’s there looking flustered and excited and somewhat crazy. I stare at him for a moment, wondering why he’s here, and he watches me, breathing heavily and grinning.
“I had a breakthrough,” he declares. “On the project. I need to see that presentation quick.”
“Uh, sure.” I step aside so he can come in, and then I gesture for him to follow me upstairs, where my laptop’s on my desk.
I open my door and he zones straight in on it, opening up the file, knowing exactly where to find it on my hard drive. I sit on the end of my bed watching as he searches through the slides, reads, types maniacally, and then saves and closes the whole thing.
Then, with a huge gush of air leaving his lungs, he leans back in my chair and stretches his arms above his head.
I saw him typing in equations. I don’t even want to ask what he was doing.
“Okay?” I ask, laughter in my voice.
“Sorry. I was on my way to the beach and I was thinking about something and—well, I didn’t have any paper on me, so I thought I’d just come straight here. Sorry for intruding.”
“It’s fine—don’t worry about it.”
“How was the party?” he asks amicably.
“Good …” I remember to smile, like I had an awesome time. I mean, I did have a good time, but parties clearly aren’t my thing.
“What’s up?” he asks; there must be something in my face.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Nothing’s wrong.”
He keeps his eyes on my face another few seconds before saying, “All right, if you insist.”
That’s when I remember something I’ve been meaning to tell him since yesterday morning, and I jump a little on the bed, snapping my fingers. “Ike!”
For a second after my random outburst, I see something flicker across his face. Something that makes him look sullen and dark. But then the most baffled look comes over his face—a look that scrunches his nose up in the cutest way and makes me want to smile—and I think I must have imagined the other expression.
“What?”
I keep my gaze steadily on him, barely able to contain my smile. “You said it’s hard to get a nickname from Dwight, remember? Well, I’ve got one: Ike.”
Dwight just looks at me, his expression of confusion smoothing out and his dark eyebrows arching a little higher on his forehead, an unspoken question.
“Like Eisenhower,” I elaborate. “President Dwight—”
“—D. Eisenhower,” he finishes, talking over me.
“Exactly.” I was going through my History homework yesterday morning, and there was a question comparing various posters from presidential campaigns, and Eisenhower’s was one of them. His slogan was I like Ike.
Dwight’s face has become a closed book. He leans back in my desk chair and splays his fingers out on either side of my laptop. Not sure what could be going through his mind, I adopt my own poker face.
He hates it, I think. I don’t know why that thought makes me feel so … so disappointed.
But I sit and wait, and eventually he speaks.
“Ike.” Dwight says the name like he’s tasting it, feeling the way it rolls off his tongue, concentrating on the sound of it. “Ike and Dice: partners in crime,” he jokes, but there’s something in his eyes, in his voice, that leads me to believe his heart’s not really in it.
“Partners in physics,” I correct, and earn a chuckle; then, when he lifts his head to look at me again, his sea-green eyes are soft and that quirky lopsided smile of his is back once mo
re. I take that to mean: Okay, you can call me Ike.
I’m already beaming back at him, and he gives a barely perceptible shake of his head, the kind that says he just doesn’t know what to do with me.
Chapter 28
School is closed on Tuesday for some kind of electrical inspection. But hey, I’m not complaining: I have a day off! And the best thing is that Dr. Anderson was going to have a “word” with me today about the pop quiz he gave us last lesson (needless to say I got, like, 52 percent, disgracing the good record of his AP class), but I’m hoping that by tomorrow, he’ll have forgotten all about it.
I plan on sleeping in, catching up on the sleep I missed out on Saturday night.
Somebody phones me at seven in the morning, though, so all hopes of getting rid of the bags under my eyes go up in smoke.
Groggy, I fumble for my cell phone. At first I think it’s my alarm going off, so I stab my finger at the screen a couple of times until I realize what’s going on. “Bryce,” I groan, “it’s seven in the morning.”
“Your morning voice is very sexy,” he replies with a chuckle in his voice.
I collapse back onto my pillows. “What do you want?” I rub my eyes, and the light streaming stubbornly through my closed drapes refuses to let me even think about going back to sleep.
“I thought we could spend the day together,” he says brightly. “We haven’t spent quality time together in ages, so I thought we could do something.”
“Like what?”
“I have a plan.” He doesn’t elaborate.
I sigh. “Don’t tell me—it’s some kind of surprise, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Now, go eat breakfast and get dressed. Nothing too fancy, though. I’ll be there at eight to pick you up.”
As I shower, I think about having Bryce as my boyfriend. He makes me feel wanted. When I’m with him, I forget that the old Madison ever existed.
My parents know my life back in Pineford was far from okay. “Bearable” might be stretching it, even. But I didn’t want them to know how bad it really was. I guess I got so used to hiding from the people at school that I started doing it at home too. Now I’m with Bryce, my position in the popular clique at school is secure—no need for pretending. So why do I feel like I’m still pretending?
Bryce turns up on my doorstep at eight on the dot. I open the door to find him in some clean, only slightly battered white sneakers, jeans and a gray T-shirt that hugs his muscles comfortably. The sunlight catches his hair and makes his eyes bright, and he flashes me that heartbreaker of a smile.
“Ready to go?”
“I think so,” I tell him. “Come on in a sec—I just need to grab my purse.”
“Okay.”
“So where did you say we were going, exactly?” I call down as I hurry to my room.
“I didn’t!” he shouts back, laughing.
“Darn,” I mutter, but I laugh too. I’d half hoped he’d tell me—although I’m totally excited that he’s planning some surprise. I pause in front of my dresser to touch up my makeup before finding my purse and hurrying downstairs again.
We get in Bryce’s car and he tells me, “You can be DJ today. Feel honored—I don’t usually let people touch the stereo.”
I laugh. “Thanks. So, how long will it take to get where we’re going?”
He thinks for a moment. “Maybe half an hour, forty minutes? I know where I’m going, though. Pretty much.”
“Pretty much? Why does that not comfort me?”
He laughs and reaches to squeeze my knee instead of moving the gear shift. Then he leans over to kiss me before starting the engine and pulling out.
We talk about all kinds of things on the drive over—shreds of gossip from Bryce’s party, the soccer match on Friday.
The Hounds have already played a couple of matches. They were mostly away, or they weren’t very important because they were right at the beginning of the season, but this one, for some reason or other that I can’t remember, is important. The entire school is abuzz with anticipation. It’s against one of our main rival schools, Buchanan High, so there’s even more of a competitive edge.
“I’m really excited about this game. I really think we can win it.”
“You haven’t lost a game so far this season,” I remind him.
He pauses before saying, “They’re all counting on me. They don’t always say it before the match ’cause they don’t want to freak me out. But I know they are. And my parents. Coach said he heard a college scout might be at the match.”
“It’s a bit early in the season, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, maybe, but they’re just scouts, finding out if there’s anyone worth really keeping their eye on.”
He doesn’t usually talk about soccer and his scholarship like this. It’s more like, “I’m hoping to get a scholarship,” or maybe, “My mom’s really hoping I get a scholarship to this college.” Sometimes he says, “I need to figure out my backup plan in case the scholarship falls through. Everyone needs a safety school.”
But this is different.
I can tell he’s worried that he won’t get it. I can’t imagine the kind of pressure he’s under from everyone. And on top of that he’s got to keep his grades up.
He doesn’t say anything more on that subject for a long minute, which I track by the song on the radio. Then he bumps the dial a little, turning the music up.
He parks the car on a small square of gravel at the bottom of a hill. It’s thickly wooded and steep, but clear paths are marked out by beaten tracks in the dirt and grass. There are wildflowers too that brighten it up.
We climb out of the car and I don’t regret wearing my Converse. Bryce pops open the trunk and hauls out first a blanket, and then a giant cooler bag that looks full to bursting.
“Do you want me to carry anything?” I ask first.
He laughs. “I can handle it, don’t worry. I’ll carry you on the other shoulder if you want,” he offers with a chuckle, and pats his right shoulder, since the cooler and blanket are over his left.
“I’m good. So. A picnic, huh?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
I laugh again, and take the three steps toward him, going on my tiptoes to kiss him.
We start walking up the hill—I don’t have to be a genius to figure out we’re going up. We don’t talk much. Not because we’re out of breath, just because we’re both letting our thoughts wander. It’s not until we’re almost at the top that it really hits me: my boyfriend has brought me out for a picnic.
Just four months ago, if you’d suggested this could ever happen to me, I’d have laughed and told you that you were completely crazy. That would never, not in a million years, happen to Fatty Maddie. The notion of any boyfriend was simply laughable, let alone one who did cute things like this.
I glance at Bryce out of the corner of my eyes, and I grin. The thought that he went to all this trouble gives me a warm feeling in my stomach. He didn’t have to do anything special. We could have hung out at one of our houses; maybe seen a movie or gone out to dinner … But he decided to do something special.
We stop at a little clearing. The trees have thinned out and the hill dips down, but there’s a semicircular area in which Bryce sets out the blanket and then dumps down the bag.
I walk over to the edge of the hill and look out. You can see the sea from here. And over there, you can just about make out the mall, with traffic zipping by. It’s an amazing view. And there are birds singing somewhere. The sun is bright and it makes the trees cast a yellow-green haze around us. It’s a nice kind of warm, and I hug my elbows, smiling to myself for no reason at all other than that I’m happy.
Familiar arms wrap around my waist, and I lean back and rest my head against Bryce’s shoulder. He kisses my temple.
“This is nice,” I tell him quietly. I’m almost afraid to speak too loud in case it ruins the peace that has settled here. I turn around in his arms and show him my smile. “You’re amazing.”
/>
He kisses the tip of my nose, and it makes me giggle. “You’re really wonderful, Madison, you know that?”
I don’t know if it’s him or me who initiates the kiss, and I don’t know how long it lasts, but it’s fantastic.
When we finally break away, I can’t help but let out a sigh because I didn’t want it to end, and then we’re both laughing, because we hear my stomach growling.
Bryce pokes playfully at my belly. “I guess we’d better get some food in you before you waste away, huh? What do you want? I have a bit of everything. There’re sandwiches and chips and salad and pasta and chicken wings and—”
“Whoa, slow down! It sounds like you’ve packed a feast fit for the entire soccer team in there.”
He laughs and we sit on the blanket, which is a thick fleece thing, worn with age. I run my fingers over it. Bryce starts to pile food out around us, and I see that, if anything, I was underrating the size of this picnic lunch. There’s just so much food!
“Well, dig in.”
And I do. We eat from plastic plates with matching blue plastic cutlery, loading whatever we want onto our plates and stuffing ourselves. I usually don’t eat this much, but I can’t help it. I’m suddenly ravenous, and the food is too good to just leave.
Bryce brings out a bowl of strawberries and a bottle of chocolate sauce—the kind you put on ice creams. “Dessert?” he asks with a grin.
I eye it for a moment, knowing my stomach can’t take much more—the waistband of my jeans is cutting in a bit—but I see the look on his face and say, “Of course,” because you can’t say no to those big, hopeful, happy brown eyes.
He opens the pot and then drizzles the delicious gooey chocolate all over the strawberries, which are a bright, succulent red. I take one in my fingers and pop it in my mouth, holding the stalk.
I let out a small groan of appreciation. Bryce chuckles at me and eats one himself. I’m about to reach for another when he picks it up for me, holding it out. I look at the strawberry for a moment before leaning forward, opening my mouth and giggling slightly.